About
My name is Bryan Westbrook. The 'Douebleu' thing came from when I sought to avoid high school reunions on social media - back when I could somewhat tolerate social media. So I began to put my last name as 'doubleu'. Soon after, I noticed there were tons of other ‘Bryan Doubleu’s’ and realized that if I added an 'e' in there as it looked cooler (so I thought at the time), looked like a surname and not the hundreds of other Doubleu’s on stuff like Facebook, and also held a meaning in French when split in half (I think).
‘Lonesome Ghost’ was a name I had intended to use for a project that turned into L98 (of which I never put anything out there aside from stealing “White Noise” to put on Sever)… That Bryan ‘Douebleu’ thing was getting silly and at the same time I didn’t want the “circle of sharks” tag on everything I put out… As things stood when I was putting out music for Broken Empire or Wylds I was using “circle of sharks” as a pseudo label… So, after growing tired of both the ‘Douebleu’ name and the ‘circle of sharks’ pseudo label I was trying to figure out a name to use as just an umbrella for everything and went with the ‘Lonesome Ghost’ thing. In the end the name fits as it’s all solo efforts and I moved nearly a thousand miles away from a place where I had spent so much of my life.
Now for more boring stuff… I was born and raised in Los Angeles County and currently reside in south Orange County (a place that is devoid of musical opportunities outside of rehashing metal, punk, and classic rock) I currently live in Jacksonville, Oregon (equally devoid of people wanting to make interesting music). When I was maybe 4 years old, or there about, I would listen to my mom’s records and fell in love with Jimmy Page’s playing. At the age of 5 I remember my grandfather asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said a guitar player - much to his apparent dismay. I’d eventually move on in grade and middle school to steal my parent’s records … stuff like Bowie, Zeppelin, T. Rex, Psychedelic Furs, The Smiths, etc., and if they were vinyl I’d play them on my crappy turntable - unaware that I was essentially ruining them while doing so due to the awful needle on my less than stellar turntable. I used to come home from junior high and high school and put on music and stare at the ceiling until it eventually would begin to move. Stuff like The Cure (especially 17 Seconds and Faith), Sonic Youth, earlier Echo & the Bunnymen (Heaven Up Here is my favorite), Joy Division, Jane’s Addiction (nothing past Ritual), Ride (which, at the time, albums like Nowhere and Going Blank Again was like hearing someone else doing what I wanted to be doing), and many more turned me on to textures and mood. Later, while living in Santa Cruz, the first half of Verve’s A Storm in Heaven would become my personal pinnacle for atmosphere and texture. [During my time in Santa Cruz in the 90’s; across the bay and over in Monterey, Pebble Beach to be exact, there existed one of the best radio stations ever… Friday nights was a guy that would play music my [at-the-time] girlfriend and I loved - bands like Ride, Love & Rockets, Verve, Sonic Youth, Peter Murphy and Bauhaus, so many more - tracks and bands you would never hear on the radio… He used to start every show with PiL’s “The Order of Death”. Sunday nights had another show that consisted of some of the absolute best dub music I’ve heard to date. I’ve since looked high and low in hopes of finding taped shows on YouTube to no avail. Bummer.]
This site serves as a hub for all of my music versus having a site for each project separately. All of my music is 100% a solo effort. As of now, I have three projects; circle of sharks, Wylds, and Holy Broken Empire. Everything is written, played, recorded, and mixed by me. I’ve found that I often like using simple changes and find ways to keep it interesting by giving it the illusion of change and movement by using inversions, rhythmic changes to bass lines, etc. Much more often than not I sit down with absolutely no idea what to do and the music forms by chance - usually started by a simple progression, a bass line, and at times I will use loops to get stuff going… Yet I have hundreds of cell phone recordings of “ideas” that have mostly gone untapped. Here and there I find myself going through old, abandoned Logic projects and find stuff that I should revisit. I rarely, if ever, do any sort of overdubs (something I will be trying to get into more I suppose). Most of my projects consists of maybe eight tracks. I’ve seen some people doing mixes on YouTube and they’ve got dozens - just insane to me… Do you really need to throw that much shit in there? Back in the day bands like The Beatles got by with just four tracks.
circle of sharks has been my classroom off and on since 2009; it’s a document of my journey going it alone - and it’s been a long personal struggle. I will not even go into my disastrous foray into attempting to master my own music while also printing horrible mixes (2009 - 2011), and then moving on to using a very subpar, and borderline scam artist, mastering service - and still having subpar mixes (2012 - 2017). Finally I now have a good workflow, the ability to turn out some decent mixes, and I have a mastering engineer I trust. Hollow, which I released in 2019, marked a real turning point. Later, with the 2020 releases of The Year of Hype & Hysteria and Sever, I had finally reached a place where I was actually doing good mixes and was proud of my output - this, finally, after a decade of nearsightedness and personal failure. I kind of went in all sorts of directions with cos while trying to find what I wanted to do with it; vocals, loops and drum machines, some electronics, semi-psychedelic, post-punk and more. Eventually it has become simply instrumental alternative music that typically consists of drums, bass, guitars, and at times keys… I also broke off future material that contained vocals or didn’t fit with cos’ solidified instrumental style into two new projects.
The name circle of sharks has nothing to do with fish with teeth; the inspiration came from the Oval Office at the White House… A circle where people decide the fates of millions… And, at that time when I came up with it, Iraq was littered with depleted uranium munitions used by coalition forces in a war based on lies (which the Iraqi people have paid dearly for), and the Obama administration, headed by the man himself and Hillary Clinton, had literal kill lists and were aiding terrorists in sovereign nations like Egypt, Libya, and Syria during Arab Spring (which I personally believe was instigated by the west and NATO - just as the Maidan Uprising in Ukraine was sparked and perpetuated by the US - go listen to the Victoria Nuland phone recording). The other part of the name that I liked, at the time, was that it paints a picture of being utterly fucked. So yeah, not really what most would likely think. At times I completely detest the name, which came to be in 2009, and I have thought about changing it rather frequently - which would sadly be a setback as I would lose the very small number of listeners I have - and other times I just try and move forward doing my thing.
circle of sharks has spent over a decade in relative obscurity (as is the same with all of my projects) - due mostly to my lack of self-promotion (literally zero presence on social media for example) - putting out some bad mixes etc never helps either; but while the main reason for this is due to my own choices (and likely my own duality regarding it) many platforms do next to nothing to promote exposure to obscure artists and bands. In the end I can’t help but feel one of the biggest causes of this obscurity is due to my own manifestation, and if you believe in ideas like a universal consciousness, it is likely perpetuated by my own lack of commitment and an equal lack of not having a black and white goal.
The following cos full-lengths and EP’s have been removed from distribution (and will very likely never see the light of day again):
The Bedroom Tapes (EP -2009), MMX (EP - 2009), March of the Drones (2010), Upside Down (2010), False Heartbeats (EP - 2010), Lying in Wait (2012), Silence is the End (2012), and Di-Lais (2017)
SKOUTY: September 8, 2000 - October 2, 2017
On October 2, 2017, at 2:15 AM, I lost my beloved cat named Skout, who is very much my son, to cancer. We fought extremely hard, with several scary stays in emergency rooms over summer 2017. I found him an excellent holistic vet, and up until three weeks before he left blood work was showing we were winning across the board… Only to have fate step in in one of the strangest and unexplainable ways which ultimately led me to become more spiritually conscious (not in a religious or dogmatic sense) via synchronicity that breaks conventional belief/thinking and are way too many, and likely too out there for closed minds, to list. The ‘spiritual’ synchronicities started becoming clear to me on the very day he transitioned, while of all things, I listened to “So High” - a song that was written and recorded two days prior with him right by my side (the verse “I look down and my feet leave the ground” hit me). From there they grew exponentially. He was with me from the moment he came into this world and for over 17 years. If I were to grab a guitar and play he would get really happy and excited and want to be either on my lap or right next to me - something that lasted until the last month of his life. He’d always want to hang out if I had friends over as well. His favorite band is Beach House (we actually went to see them in his honor in August 2018 at Hollywood Forever Cemetery) and the Beach House Pandora station that was often on when he was here frequently echoes downstairs to this day. Two days after he had left us we had just got off of a call which I recorded that was us conversing with a communicator we had used (sounds silly I know, and while I am a jaded cynic she had conveyed stuff to us that was literally impossible for her to know) and as soon as my wife ended the call, and I stopped recording the call to Logic, she put her phone down and immediately it started playing “Levitation” by Beach House - still gives me chills. Funny how such an alpha liked such soft music. Much of the content on Wyld’s The Veil is influenced by my profound love for him, the emptiness I’ve felt since he left, a feeling that the majority of my heart & purpose in this world had left with him, and my grief. I have never in my life been so profoundly influenced by another being. Due to his role in in my life, my music, and The Veil, I’ve included a few pictures of him on this site. To this very moment, if I could swap places and endure what he went through to spare him any suffering I would. I miss you so much Skouty… You are truly irreplaceable.